


Star Wars: The Broken Droid

by Kharti



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Star Wars - Lancerverse, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Stormpilot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 04:43:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharti/pseuds/Kharti
Summary: All at once, power filled its circuits and allowed it to see, to hear.To think.What was its mission?  Find a rebel ship, initiate hyperdrive, and eliminate the threat.Its mission, then, was to cease to be."How sad," it thought, before powering its ship and beginning the journey across the stars in search of a target.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyredms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyredms/gifts).



 

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...._

 

 **STAR WARS**  
**THE BROKEN DROID**

 

With the fall of the REPUBLIC, the sinister  
Supreme Leader Snoke seeks to quell the  
RESISTANCE at all costs. A malfunctioning  
navicomputer proves to be the key he  
needs to achieve absolute domination.

 

Rumors spread across the galaxy of a new  
droid that utilizes  hyperdrive to eliminate  
rebel  ships,  an  act  that  was  deemed  an  
intergalactic war crime long ago. Known as  
LANCERS, these droids are a stark reminder  
of  the  FIRST  ORDER's  ruthless  tyranny.

 

On a mission of destruction without regard  
for their own existence, these droids will be  
the end of peace for citizens far and wide....

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

As the droid came online, the first thing it noticed was sound.

Not just the internal whirring of gears and buzzing of electricity—but all of the noise that reverberated against its metal plates from the factory as hundreds of other droids just like it were put together, crafted, affixed to their ships, and sent off.

There was so much that its sound processor was nearly overloaded trying to interpret it all.

The droid shifted its attention to its own ship. Everything was streamlined down to the absolute bare minimum to enter hyperspace. What limited resources it had available in its memory banks informed it that this was all it needed to serve its mission.

_Locate rebel ship._

_Initiate hyperdrive._

_Destroy the threat._

It had no serial number, no designation, no identification. These were unnecessary for something that would cease to exist once its purpose was fulfilled.

Though it hadn't been equipped with the artificial intelligence required to understand sadness, two words flashed across its processor: "How sad."

One arm of pistons and gears reached out toward the ship's console and an articulated digit flicked an assortment of switches. The low hum of the ship powering on surrounded the droid in a palpable warmth, and it almost felt comforted by this as it launched into the endless expanse of darkness outside.

The factory world fell away behind it and, soon, it was enveloped in nothing but stars and distant planets.

Its ship continued to hum, but the comfort was lost to the realization of futility.

How big was space? The droid didn't have enough power to process this, so it knew that meant _very large_.

How many rebel ships were there? This data had not been transferred to its stores, but it reasoned that there were fewer ships than stars, and it could see many, many, _many_ stars.

What were the odds it would find one? Low. How low? It didn't know. Certainly lower than the odds of it getting:

\- Lost.

\- Stranded without fuel.

\- Caught in a planet's gravitational pull and crashing.

\- Picked up by a scavenging ship and broken down for parts.

\- Destroyed by the rebel ship it, by rare chance, actually managed to find.

The droid continued to scan the view ahead of it while it pondered its circumstances. Two familiar words lit up the circuits within.

"How sad."


	3. Chapter 3

Finn spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to think less. Or, at least, he thought so. Maybe he spent a normal amount of time thinking about not thinking.

It wasn't like he could just go up to someone and ask, "Hey, how often do you spend thinking?" That seemed like what a crazy person would do, and he really needed to fit in.

Some people on the Resistance base still didn't trust him. He didn't blame them, of course. These people were willing to give their lives to fight against the people he used to work for—used to _be_. How could he expect them to believe that he wasn't a spy?

The real problem, he thought—thought, thought _thought_ , he was always thinking, wasn't he? Finn pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes in the hopes he could put enough pressure on his brain to turn it off for just one kriffing moment.

The real problem was he needed to fit in, but he didn't. When Poe wasn't there, he was lost. There wasn't a clear, defined role for him. He just sort of wandered the base, waiting, worrying.

It was so dangerous for Poe to be out there, even if he was with his squadron. They had all heard the rumors about the so-called "lancer droids", had seen the debris of ships mangled together with no other explanation than the worst scenario.

Droids were being programmed to enter hyperspace directly through rebel ships.

Such a thing was practically unspeakable to the point that it was an actual, legitimate _war crime_. The Sith, the Empire, the First Order—they had all been and were bad, definitely and undeniably bad, but this was a whole other level.

Finn walked down a hall with feigned purpose. He hoped he would spot someone who needed help with something and that would get his mind off the worry that buzzed in his skull.

He was thinking too much. That's what Poe told him with that easygoing grin before hopping in his fighter for whatever it was General Organa was sending him on this time.

That was so easy for Poe to say. He never seemed to worry about anything. If Finn didn't know how brilliant the man was, he'd think Poe never thought, just flew and moved and acted on instinct alone.

Okay. Finn stopped walking and closed his eyes. He breathed in through his nose, clenched and unclenched his hands, and focused on what was right in front of him.

He was outside the hangar where Poe would bring his ship to take it to the maintenance level. Even without trying, he was just trying to find Poe.

With a sigh, Finn looked up at the sky and wondered what he'd do if he saw the X-wing there.

It wasn't.

How could he stop thinking so much?

While he just stood there feeling sorry for himself, people moved around him, a few shooting him looks that he was pretty sure weren't saying, "Hey! It's okay that you're just standing there not contributing anything! We don't mind!"

They minded. He didn't blame them.

So he forced himself to go back inside the base and find something to do. Something to focus on. Anything.

The click of his boots against the metal floor were, somehow, a comfort. It twisted his gut to think—to think, always _thinking_ —but at least as FN-2187 he had a clear purpose.

FN-2187 was respected. FN-2187 followed orders. FN-2187 received commendations.

...

Until it was no longer simulations, and he was faced with reality.

FN-2187 hadn't been prepared for reality.

It was by sheer luck—or maybe the Force—that he met Poe. That he was given a choice instead of orders, and he was certain he had picked the right one. He became Finn.

But even Finn wasn't prepared for reality, especially when he was shocked back to it by a hand clapping him on the shoulder.

"Buddy!"

The thoughts whirling and rattling in his head suddenly coalesced into one great, big mental sigh of relief that escaped him in one word: "Poe?"

He received that cocky, annoying, gorgeous, wonderful self-sure grin in response. "That a question? You expecting someone else?"

Finn wasn't certain whether he wanted to laugh or hug him. He opted for both. "You're back!"

"As if there were any other option," Poe said in a voice that was between amusement and something deeper, more meaningful, and Finn didn't want to think about it too much or else his head would start to hurt again.


	4. Chapter 4

_OUT OF MEMORY_

The droid began to crawl through its earliest memories to replay them before they were deleted.

It erased the meteor shower it watched on the surface of a planet it didn't know the name of. It didn't know the name of any planets.

It forgot the time it got lost in an asteroid belt for countless ticks.

It let go of the star it watched flicker out and die, a distant light suddenly gone.

There was something strange about each loss, and that was the fact they felt like losses. The droid mourned each bit and byte of data as they were zeroed out.

The only thing that had to remain was its mission. To modify that required an access level it didn't have, which struck it as rather odd. Who would have permission, then, if no one cared to even give it a name?

There was something else, though; something that the droid always kept in favor of other available options.

It kept a running count of how many planets it came across.

Of course, since it didn't know their names and didn't have the space available to store information about them, there was no way to know if counted the same ones multiple times.

But the droid didn't mind that part so much. It felt a sense of satisfaction each time the number increased. It was, for lack of any other, a sense of purpose.

At present, it had seen a maximum of 23,743 planets. It estimated 17% were duplicates, but it was happy with that number and didn't want to waste time on the math.

...

..

.

19,707.

Well, there had been nothing else to do but fly and watch and wait and hope, but the number was disappointing.

So it deleted the memory of doing the math.

23,743 was a good number.

How long had it been flying through space? Tracking time was useless, so it didn't. It couldn't. There was no internal system it could locate that measured such a thing.

But now it wondered.

As it moved past a star and added its two planets to the running total, the droid could hear the ever-present tick, tick, tick of its timing system that kept everything in sync.

Ticks. This was all the droid had as an understanding of time. A tick moved quickly, so although it knew that meant the number would be large, it tried.

It counted each tick as it waited to come across another planet.

Tick, tick, tick.

What was this sensation as it watched the counter increment? It wanted to know. It didn't want to know. It had to know. It shouldn't know.

Tick, tick, tick.

It knew the number would be high, but as the tick meter passed a thousand, the droid began to mourn.

Tick, tick, tick.

This mission was hopeless.

Tick.

The droid didn't have to do the math to know its odds of a successful completion were far from in its favor.

Tick.

Then, a planet differentiated itself from the expanse of black and light, drew near and brought a rush of excitement through the droid's circuits.

The ship slowed to a halt as the droid diverted all power to calculating the number of ticks it had been wandering space.

Average ticks between planets: 3,195.

Estimated amount of ticks since coming online: 75,868,470.

The droid tried to imagine all of those ticks.

When it felt despair at how unfathomable that many ticks was, it realized there was a spark of hope: 17% of the planets in its total were likely duplicates.

Its processor was warm as it continued to push it through calculations.

19,709.

There was a flash of "How sad" as it lamented the loss of so many planets, but it found itself distracted by the new total of ticks.

62,970,255.

It was still an overwhelmingly large number, and the droid fell back into uncertainty over its purpose.

Millions of ticks' worth of memories had been stored and deleted. It had probably encountered things, places, people, sights—perhaps even extraordinary ones—perhaps even lots of them—and would never be able to recall any of it.

So it restored the larger number of planets and wiped the rest, the calculation, the realization, the loneliness.

...

23,746 was a good number.


	5. Chapter 5

Poe Dameron was many things.

He was the best pilot the resistance had. He was a good-looking, clever, and confident guy.

He was a great commander. He was respected by his subordinates.

He was pretty good at dejarik. He was terrible at games that needed him to bluff, though he'd deny that to the grave.

He was a traditional romantic who believed in the language of flowers and the value of poetry.

He most certainly wasn't a coward—and yet there he was, hiding in his fighter, the power off so he could drown in the sound of silence.

Back at the base, he knew Finn was waiting for him with those eyes that saw only his good qualities—of which he knew he had plenty—and none of the bad.

Something drifted by inside the cockpit and bumped against his temple. He moved a weightless hand to catch it and, when he realized what it was, a warmth spread through him.

It was nothing that seemed significant, but it was everything to him: a shattered piece of Finn's stormtrooper armor.

When he had first found it on Jakku, he pocketed it to remember the brave soul who had saved his life.

And when he discovered that Finn was alive, was so much braver than he imagined, he wedged it into a safe place in his cockpit as his keepsake.

Each pilot in his squadron had something to remind them of who they fought for, why they kept going despite the odds. Poe used to pride himself that his keepsake was his raw determination.

He was not too proud to fall in love, however.

Poe relaxed into a smile as he returned the shard to where it belonged.

Over the years of his life, Poe had met so many different people within and without the resistance—and none of them were like Finn.

He was strong, despite the insecurities that seemed to plague him. Poe couldn't fathom leaving behind everything he knew, everything he had been raised to believe.

At first, of course, it had just been admiration and gratitude. And when he saw Finn again—wearing his jacket, no less—Poe admitted there was definitely a physical attraction there, too.

But after Poe got to know him, got to see the strength and courage and honesty and downright beauty of his spirit, his feelings changed and grew.

Breathing in, Poe stared out into the endless expanse of space. All those stars out there, surrounded by all those planets, populated by all those people... and he had to fall for Finn.

Finn, so unaware of how handsome he was that he'd be shirtless and have no idea why Poe struggled to speak.

Finn, so uncertain of his place in the resistance and the galaxy at large that the last thing he needed was for the person he felt he owed his life to make him confuse gratitude and attraction.

Poe ran his tongue along the back of his teeth and grunted when a series of beeps and trills reverberated in his helmet.

"BB-8, I _am_ scouting. Quietly."

The astromech chirped a short-clipped laugh before scolding him again.

Poe rolled his eyes, but his lips quirked into a grin as he flicked the systems back on. "Yeah, I know he's waiting. Come on, let's—"

A blip flashed onto his radar, and his attention snapped to it. "Buddy, you see that?"

He flipped through a few screen while BB-8 read off a report. Small vessel, no life forms, and a—

"Hyperdrive?" Poe felt his heart leap into his throat. "No." His hands flew faster than his thoughts as he got the ship ready for fight or flight. "Of all the kriffing odds!"

He looked up and saw it. A small vessel heading right for him, unmistakable in its almost laughably minimalist design: it was a lancer.

As BB-8 reported that the hyperdrive had been activated in the lancer ship, Poe's chest clenched.

Finn was going to be _livid_.


	6. Chapter 6

At first, the droid thought it was malfunctioning—simply superimposing an image of a rebel ship onto its field of view.

A self-diagnostic scan showed no anomalies or apparent errors.

When it flew closer, it realized with a surge that lit up every circuit: it had achieved the first part of its mission.

It had located a rebel ship.

Its digits clicked against each other as it hurriedly, nervously, excitedly angled toward the ship and activated the hyperdrive.

Step two, complete.

The rebel ship was in its sights. Its own ship was humming as fuel and power diverted through the systems while the rebel's was just coming online.

The droid realized it only had a few seconds before its mission was complete and it was all over. What remained in its memory banks played quickly in an effort to relive some of the beauty it had seen in its last moments.

It saw a nebula of blue and purple painting a backdrop for a planet and its seven moons.

It saw planets of fire, of ice, of water, of substances unknown to it that it would never explore.

It had watched a sun disappear behind a large planet, enveloping it in a golden halo of light.

It had watched stars come to life and stars die.

It had seen 32,196 planets.

It had wanted to see 50,000 for no other reason than that seemed like a good number.

It would only ever see 32,196 planets, and it knew it hadn't even actually seen that many.

"How sad."

The ship lurched forward, but something was wrong. An alert flashed in the corner of its dashboard, nondescript but enough to know that the hyperdrive had failed.

Panicked, the droid tried to engage it again while its ship collided uselessly against the rebel's.

Something deep within it broke, like a byte being overwritten by brute force, and all it could do was repeat the same action.

Aim at the rebel ship.

Attempt to jump into hyperdrive.

Aim at the rebel ship.

Attempt to jump to hyperdrive.

Aim...

Attempt...

Aim...


	7. Chapter 7

Finn was happy to have a job, he really was. It gave him something to do, something to keep his mind occupied and to pass the time while Poe was gone.

Poe...

He'd taken off without a word again. Sometimes he just did that. He would get a look in his eyes, like he could see past the atmosphere and out into space, and there was something out there calling to him, and he would go to find it.

Was it weird that Finn was jealous of space? It _was_ weird, wasn't it? And did that make _him_ weird?

Finn rubbed the back of his sleeve across his forehead and tried to focus again on his task: cleaning the ships down in maintenance.

There was an ironic comfort in being right back where he used to be in the sanitation division of the First Order, especially because he had loathed the assignment at the time. It had felt like an insult then.

Now, he willingly and happily threw himself into the work. It stopped him from thinking so much, which was definitely a good thing.

He didn't have time to think about how much he missed Poe. Or how he loved when Poe was fresh off his ship, glowing with youthful vigor, hair matted with sweat, skin glistening with that same sweat...

Finn cursed under his breath. Thinking was bad enough, but thinking _those_ thoughts were even worse. He'd heard how some of the people on base talked about Poe. The man was basically everyone's ideal type.

And how could he not be? He was good-looking, clever, and confident. He always knew just what to say, and he was never thinking about it when he spoke. He just _knew_ , like it all came naturally to him.

Finn envied him. Finn idolized him. Finn—Finn _wanted_ him. He wanted to grab him and make him look at him, see him, not look past him up at the stars but _really see him_. He wanted to give him a reason to stay, not permanently, not forever, but just for a little while—long enough to show Poe just how grateful he was for giving him a new life he had never dreamed of.

Something rattled and clanked behind him, and he practically jumped out of Poe's jacket. A maintenance droid blipped an apology before going back to its task.

His heart was racing, but he wasn't sure if it was from the surprise or from his thoughts. His stupid, selfish thoughts. Poe had so much responsibility on his shoulders, and he meant so much to everyone in the resistance. The last thing the man needed or wanted was a distraction from his duties.

Just like Finn really needed to stop distracting himself with all these thoughts. He bit down on his tongue and focused every corner of his mind on scrubbing the fighter wing in front of him.

"Incoming!" a voice hollered from somewhere down a hall. "Poe's coming in hot!"

Hot? Finn's blood ran cold. Was it the First Order? For once moving faster than he could think, Finn was ducking and weaving through the maintenance bay and up the stairs, down the halls, and out into the open.

Up in the sky, he could see Poe's fighter being tailed by a shoddy little vessel. Voices were all around him, shouting out orders for weapons to be at the ready. Finn heard something about Poe's orders were to hold fire, but Finn wanted to grab the nearest blaster and protect him, save him, destroy whatever it was—

Poe dropped out the back of his fighter, which kept moving without him, and Finn could see BB-8 still perched on top. The other vessel continued to follow with a grating sound as it continually brushed its nose against one of the wings of Poe's ships.

"Poe!" Finn ran forward and grabbed the man by the shoulders. "What is—What's going on? What _is_ that?"

There was that easygoing laugh that crinkled Poe's eyes. "Whoa, whoa, calm down. Look." He held his arms out to the sides. "I'm fine, all right? See?" His hands moved to cover Finn's. "I'm perfectly fine."

Finn released a sigh that took away some of his tension, but not all of it. His eyes flicked up to the unknown ship that continued to push against Poe's that BB-8 kept in a wide circle above the base. "And that?"

"Oh, that. Well." Poe squeezed Finn's hands before pulling them off his shoulders. "It followed me home, so I thought we could keep it."

All Finn could do was stare at Poe, trying to read an answer in his casual grin. Then, Poe cleared his throat—a sign of _nervousness_ , and Poe was _never_ nervous, and suddenly Finn was scared and his heart was in the pit of his stomach.

"Commander Dameron," came General Organa's voice, sending Finn skittering back a few steps away from Poe. "Would you care to explain why your droid is taking what appears to be a _lancer droid_ for a stroll above our base?"

Finn had never fainted before, not without some kind of blow to the head.

He felt like fainting right then.


	8. Chapter 8

Though Finn's reaction was definitely something Poe wanted to grin over, the gravity of the situation kept his expression and tone appropriate in front of General Organa.

"Well, I was"— _hiding from my feelings for Finn_ —"doing a cursory patrol. Blasted lancer snuck up on me"— _because I was doing a poor job of hiding, emotionally_ and _literally_ —"but it seems to be having some sort of malfunction. Initiates hyperdrive, but just—"

As his fighter made a slow turn overhead, BB-8's shrill vocalizations of clear dismay were just slightly louder than the grinding of the lancer's ship against his own.

"—well, that," Poe finished with the grin he couldn't suppress any longer.

General Organa eyed the craft with a tired frown that had once, a long time ago, likely been a beautiful smile. "I see. And so you thought your best course of action was to lead it directly to our base."

Poe tried to give a casual shrug, but he was too tense under Finn's incredulous stare to pull it off. "I flew it around a while. BB-8 tried to communicate with it, but he said it's just repeating the same thing over and over."

"And what is that?" Leia finally looked at him again.

Poe glanced between her and Finn before replying, "Aim, attempt. Like it's stuck in some kind of loop." His hand waved to dismiss the topic. "Listen, I think there is real value here! We have one of these crazy things. We can study it. Maybe even—"

"—find a way to tie them to the First Order," Leia finished in a hushed breath, the weariness fading from her face. "If we could prove Snoke is behind them, he'd be a war criminal. That could change everything."

Poe grinned. "Every army in the galaxy would have no choice but to join the fight against him."

When Leia hesitated, the silence between them was overburdened with grating metal on metal. The wrinkles between her brow deepened as she yelled, "Would someone _please_ incapacitate that ship already?!"

Poe could only laugh while others scrambles to obey the order and Leia strode away with a small, dramatic whirl. He turned to look at Finn, a witty remark on the tip of his tongue that fell away when he saw the glazed look in the man's eyes.

"Hey, buddy, it's okay," he said as he surged forward to plant his hands on Finn's shoulders. "Don't panic. I'm fine. You're fine. Everything's fine."

Finn sucked in a breath with a slight wheeze. He looked somewhere past Poe's right ear, eyes unfocused, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. "A lancer found you."

"Yeah, yeah it did. But look at me. Hey, look." When their eyes met, Poe smiled. "Thatta boy. See me?"

Finn's throat tightened and shifted as he swallowed hard. "Yeah."

Damn the consequences. Poe raised one hand and cupped Finn's cheek, running his thumb across the prominent cheekbone. His voice came out a little shaky as he continued, "Feel me?"

Heat bloomed under dark skin. "Yeah," Finn whispered.

This was the moment in every love story where the handsome young—young _enough_ man would crush their lips together in a passionate kiss. Where all the romantic and sexual tension would finally snap and they'd wake up the next morning as lovers.

But this wasn't the time. Finn was too fragile. He needed reassurance and support and _patience_ , and Poe wasn't going to mess this up.

With the suffocating weight of longing and regret pressing against his ribs, Poe just smiled and patted Finn's cheek before withdrawing his hand. "I'm right here, and I'm fine." He laughed in a desperate attempt to find levity. "I'm also _starving_. Why don't we—"

Finn pushed him to the side with the eyes of a crazed animal and a guttural snarl. Poe could only watch in disbelief as the man ran out into the open field, shoved their fellow men out of the way, and outright _pounced_ on the downed lancer ship.

"How do I open this thing?!" Finn yelled with a crack of pain in his voice, and he pounded his fist on the glass. "Hey! You! Open up, or so help me I'll—"

Everything went silent as old, rusted machinery ground together and the bay window popped open.


	9. Chapter 9

What was it supposed to do?

There was nothing in its programming that prepared it for this.

It had finally— _finally_ found a rebel ship, but it couldn't complete its mission.

Something was wrong with it.

And now it was captured by the enemy, who had demanded that it open the bay window that the droid didn't even know could open. There was nothing telling it not to, so it tried, and it did.

The look on the humanoid's face was one of momentary surprise. It could understand that reaction.

And then the humanoid punched it. It didn't understand that.

"Fffffuck!" He jerked the fist to his chest and cradled it with his other hand. Organic matter did not stand up well against metal, it seemed.

The droid tried to catalogue everything it could about the humanoid before it, who was quickly attended by another. They were preoccupied with the malfunctioning fist that neither paid attention.

First humanoid: 1.78 meters tall. Male. Skin like space touched by a star. Two eyes, both facing forward. One nose, center of face. One mouth, two lips. Expression, angry. Hurt. Embarrassed?

Second humanoid: 1.72 meters tall. Also male. Skin like a planet without greenery or water. Same physical attributes as the first, except for the hair. This one had longer hair. And his expression was worried. But amused, too.

It shouldn't have any understanding of these expressions and emotions. There was nothing it found in its programming that explained these _feelings_ , and yet they were there.

"You punched a droid," the second humanoid said with a strained grin.

The skin of the first's face darkened. "Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I don't know, I—I guess I wasn't thinking." There was a distinct crack in his voice, the wavelength varying from the rest of the pattern.

It was then that the droid saw.

All at once, its circuits lit up and galaxies flashed past as they were replayed and deleted to make room for the sudden onslaught of data.

There was a sky. It was blue. A light blue, unlike the darkness of space.

_Purple and green swirled together in an ever-rotating nebula, littered with the debris of stalled asteroids._

The stars were gone, save for one that hung low against the horizon. There were distant mountain ranges that stretched beyond its vision range.

_Two moons rotated around each other as they circled a blue planet in a slow, never-ending orbital dance._

Around its ship was a plethora of organic life: trees, plants, dirt, insects, humanoids—all of varying shapes and sizes and colors.

_A dead planet hung alone, far from any star to call home, empty and desolate and lost._

There were so many sights and sounds that it couldn't make room fast enough. It stopped replaying memories, instead overwriting them with images, heights, dimensions, colors, sound samples. Heat built up within its processor until—

 

_SYSTEM ERROR_


	10. Chapter 10

Finn tried to shove past the pain that throbbed from his already bruising knuckles and looked over at the droid with renewed anger. "You—"

There was a moment of silence until Finn finished lamely, "You shut down."

Poe jerked his head to the side, eyes going wide. "Shut down? No, no, no." He crouched down and pressed his palms to the sides of the thing's head. Just as quickly, he pulled his hands back and gave them a little shake. "It's burning up! We need to disconnect it before it fries its memory!"

"You don't think it wiped itself, do you?" Finn leaned forward, chewing on his lower lip. "Fail safe in case of capture?"

"Sure as hell hope not," Poe muttered through grit teeth, then yelled over his shoulder, "I need a technician! Engineer! Anyone who can tell what a red wire is from blue!"

As several people started climbing aboard the ship, Finn backed away to give them space. He dropped down to the ground with a grunt and moved to stand off to one side so he could watch, worried that something might go wrong.

What if the droid was hot because it was preparing to self-destruct?

What if it was serving as a homing beacon for the First Order?

What if it hadn't malfunctioned and Poe had died?

The chaos in his mind was interrupted by the sound of his own ragged breathing, and he clenched his fist, the pain flaring up to pull him out of the panicked fugue. He couldn't break down now; Poe needed to focus on his work, not him.

A rapid series of beeps drew his attention to BB-8 as the little astromech rolled up to him, its little hand-like appendage snapping at everyone who got in its way.

"Hey, BB." Finn crouched down and held out a hand. "You okay?"

BB-8 stopped just short of his touch and trilled that it was definitely, most certainly, absolutely not okay. A spark flicked from its metallic digits as it pointed in Poe's direction and began to fire off several expletives Finn had never heard before but got the gist.

"He does that a lot, doesn't he?" Finn let out a huff of a sigh and ran his uninjured hand over his face. "Just—Just makes a decision and charges forward and doesn't think about the consequences like danger, or death, or—"

The astromech swore again, and Finn almost smiled.

"Or the emotional wellbeing of his favorite droid, yeah."

Poe was going to get himself hurt someday, and Finn wasn't sure he would be able to handle it when that day came. He wasn't sure of a lot of things right then. Not about Poe, about himself, about the lancer droid that they were disconnecting from its ship.

BB-8 rolled forward to push what constituted as its head against Finn's palm and made a soft sound almost like a purr.

Finn smiled this time. "Well, we'll just have to take extra care of him, right? You and me. Saving Poe from himself."

Even though the droid beeped in agreement, Finn felt a numbness in his own words. As if he really thought he could save Poe—as if Poe needed saving. He wasn't the one who got so angry he punched a hunk of metal bare-fisted.

A nervous laugh bubbled up and Finn lifted his gaze to watch as Poe and the others carried the droid across the courtyard and through the hangar doors.

If they really could get something useful out of the lancer, then Poe would be a hero.

Poe already was a hero, of course. To Finn.

But this would be bigger than him, way bigger than a single wayward Stormtrooper who couldn't follow orders and didn't have a purpose anymore.

He would just have to stand by and watch as Poe became a hero to everyone else, too.

It was the least he could do. Aside from the whole punching thing.


End file.
